Are asteroids, nuclear war and viruses not good enough anymore?

What ever happened to the standard ways the world was gonna end? WW3, asteroid, viruses etc? (all more likely i might add)

Now we gotta worry about super solar flares, pole shifts and rogue planets/dark stars wth!

I guess the standard end of the world scenarios were getting boring and stale.

[edit on 22-10-2009 by fallenearth]

[edit on 22-10-2009 by fallenearth]

Actually, I think it's more of a fascination with the end of the world. I'm guessing you've either seen previews for the next season of The Universe on the History Channel or saw the end of the world episode they had.

All of these things were possibilities in the past (though some we didn't know about). However, in most sci-fi stories (where these doomsday scenarios are most often discussed), WW3, asteroids or viruses can be remedied by a change in humanity in some way the author thinks would be swell.

In the case of a gamma ray burst, though... Well, we could be living in a utopian society and still be obliterated. Douglass Adams was the only one who would touch something like that, and he's dead

On top of that, I think we, as a society, are becoming more interested with astrophysics (or Star Trek, Stargate, and Babylon 5, if you prefer), and as such like to hear/learn about these things. Combine that with global calamity selling, and you've got plenty of documentaries talking about how our solar system will move into a dark nebula and irradiate all of us to well done.

JJ is right, star for you. We are becoming more educated to the possibilities of these other things you mentioned. It's not that the others weren't "getting us off" anymore. And By the way, it's not like you imply either. We (most of the folks who think about these scenarios) are not biting our nails all night long waiting for this event to happen, we don't live a paranoid life in constant fear of the skky falling. We simply think that SOMEONE needs to consider the possibilities and prepare for some type of soulution.

reply to post by junglejake


very well put, some of the possible end times are rather quiet dull - ever see the holywood movie where the earth slowly drifts into the patch of charged universe we're most likely heading for and all life is swiftly and remorselessly erradicated in without knowing or being able to do anything about it? or the one in which a unbeknown to us some strange star pops, was it bettlegese? we'll never know because the first we see is a massive wash of UV which vaporises each and every cell! Then there is the strange event which could just rip spacetime apart around us for little or no reason, the sea could start a chain reaction which quickly turns acidic and our oxygen is gone in weeks or a million other odd events which wouldn't look very good on the silver screen...

why we get more and more recently? simple, most people understand that god didn't create us and that everything isn't perfect - now we see that the cracks become all too clear. we're here by luck and luck is all that keeps us here.